t a break-down the song which to us is so sacred,
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me." Only one man succeeded, the others going
through a course of quavers and breaks which was exceedingly
laughable, but absolutely irreverent. The lack of reverence which has
sometimes characterized the social side of the Christmas services in
Japan has been the source of frequent regret to the missionaries. In a
social gathering of earnest young Christians recently, a game
demanding forfeits was played; these consisted of the recitation of
familiar texts from the Bible. There certainly seems to be a lack of
the sense of the fitness of things.

But the question is, are these practices due to an inherent
deficiency of reverence, arising from the character of the Japanese
nature, or are they due rather to the religious history of the past
and the conditions of the present? That the latter seems to me the
correct view I need hardly state. The fact that the Japanese are an
emotional people renders it probable, a priori, that under suitable
conditions they would be especially subject to the emotion of
reverence. And when we look at their history, and observe the actual
reverence paid by the multitudes to the rulers, and by the
superstitious worshipers to the "Kami" and "Hotoke," it becomes
evident that the apparent irreverence in the Christian churches must
be due to peculiar conditions. Reverence is a subtle feeling; it
depends on the nature of the ideas that possess the mind and heart.
From the very nature of the case, Japanese Christians cannot have the
same set of associations clustering around the church, the service,
the Bible, or any of the Christian institutions, as the Occidental who
has been reared from childhood among them, and who has derived his
spiritual nourishment from them. All the wealth of nineteen centuries
of experience has tended to give our services and our churches special
religious value in our eyes. The average Christian in Japan and in any
heathen land cannot have this fringe of ideas and subtle feelings so
essential to a profound feeling of reverence. But as the significance
of the Christian conception of God, endowed with glory and honor,
majesty and might, is increasingly realized, and as it is found that
the spirit of reverence is one that needs cultivation in worship, and
especially as it is found that the spirit of reverence is important to
high spiritual life and vitalizing spiritual power, more and more will
that